Satellite contract gives lift to Orbital Science, Gilbert

There's a strong Gilbert connection to Orbital Sciences Corp.'s $135 million contract to build an Earth sciences satellite for NASA that company officials announced Sept. 1.

ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2) will be built at the company's facility in the Fiesta Tech industrial park in northwest Gilbert. The satellite, scheduled for launch in 2016, is the successor to the original ICESat satellite, which flew from 2003 to 2010.

"Our selection by Goddard Space Flight Center to design, build and test the ICESat-2 spacecraft adds to our extensive and growing history of producing high-quality and reliable satellites for NASA's Earth and space science programs," said Mike Larkin, executive vice president and general manager of Orbital's Space Systems Group.

Although the new contract won't necessarily result in more jobs, it still represents an important economic benefit to Gilbert residents in that it maintains employment levels in the community, said Orbital spokesman Barron Beneski.

Positions at Orbital Sciences are generally well-paying jobs that require high levels of education and training, he said. And that's important to Gilbert because "Orbital employees live there, work there and send their kids to school there. These are the types of jobs that any community would love to have."

Getting more of those jobs is the goal of the town's ongoing economic-development efforts.

Together with the company's Chandler facility, there are about 1,500 Orbital employees in the area, Beneski said.

But the benefits from ICESat-2 go far beyond its regional economic impact, he said.

"We really need to monitor the environment so we know what's going on," he said. "Think of the recent hurricanes. It was NASA's satellite imagery that provided people with advance warning to get out of harm's way. The vantage point of space offers a unique platform to do good things for our country and the world."

ICESat-2 will use precision laser-ranging techniques to measure the size and shape of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, as well as the thickness of sea ice.

Information obtained by the satellite will help scientists develop a better understanding of how those environments react to natural processes and human actions.

The original ICESat mission provided scientists with multiyear elevation data used to determine the mass of ice sheets. The satellite also collected information on cloud properties, especially those commonly found over polar areas.

And it provided topography and vegetation data from around the world.

ICESat-2 has several specific objectives, among them:

 To quantify how the melting of polar ice sheets contributes to sea-level changes and how that ties into climate conditions.

 To better understand how ice sheets melt so scientists can improve their predictions.

 To use measurements of sea-ice thickness to figure out how ice, ocean and atmosphere exchange mass, energy and moisture.

 To understand how measurements of the distribution of vegetation can be used to estimate large-scale changes in biomass.

Orbital Sciences is based in Dulles,Va. Its primary products are small and medium-class rockets and satellites for commercial, military and civil government organizations. It also provides satellite subsystems and space-related technical services to research facilities and an assortment of government agencies.

Altogether, the company has about 3,400 employees. Company revenues for 2011 are estimated to be about $1.35 billion.

Orbital, one of the nation's top space technology companies, has several additional NASA satellites in production.